David Park
I set several challenges for myself this month.
Today is Day 18 of the Hacker Residency, Day 20 of my Daily Vlog, Day 0 of Vietnamese Lessons.
Around Day 3, I realized how ridiculously stupid this idea was. Usually I’m at the HRG Villa 16 hours a day 7 days a week. Daily vlogging is a full time job. Building a house is unpredictable and commands your attention in bursts. Vietnamese lessons… well I don’t know what that’s like because I haven’t even started yet.
By Day 3, I was ready to quit the daily vlog. In fact, in the last 18 days, I seriously considered quitting the vlog at least 4 times.
But I didn’t…
Sometimes you do hard things because they’re worth doing, because it will change your life, or if even change the world. But sometimes hard things are worth doing just simply for the fact that they’re hard. Discipline is not task specific, you either have it or you don’t. And if you don’t, then build it in one place and you will have it in every place. Most challenges are pointless beyond the fact that they are challenging. We give ourselves challenges just to prove to ourselves that we can do it and to train that discipline. We do it to test our limits, but the funny thing about testing limits is that you often realize that the limit does not exist .
The best advice I got when building my first startup was -"Set impossible goals. You’ll be surprised how often you reach them”
To be honest. I don’t know if I will be proud of myself at the end of the month. Part of me thinks that I’ll look back and think about how much time I wasted on the Daily Vlog when that attention could have been allocated toward more productive areas. However, I think my biggest weakness right now is my laziness and my lack of discipline - the ability to do something I have to do even when I don’t want to do it. If anything, succeeding in this challenge will be clear evidence that every excuse I’ve ever made in the last year NOT to do something, was invalid.
If I can make it through the entire month and complete the Daily Vlog Challenge, I will set a new standard for output and have the evidence to back it up. There were days where the situation would have any 3rd party say that I had a valid excuse to miss that day, but I still didn’t. I’ve experienced the most extreme and unexpected days, often collectively mentally, physically, and emotionally draining. I still made the vlog that day.
It does seem pretty stupid and overdramatic to talk about a Youtube video of me goofing off in Vietnam as a mountain to conquer in the face of adversity. I laugh at it too. But at the end of the day it’s about doing X when you don’t want to. I have yet to experience the hardest days of my life. And there will be plenty of X that I still NEED to do in those moments.
I’m writing this blog to remind myself in the future. If I’m feeling lazy or unmotivated. It almost doesn’t even matter what the thing is, just
DO HARD THINGS